We're proud to present to you a part of the feature list of the Pandora Mod.
We've decided to keep some features a secret for now. But we'll add them one day so stay tuned

General Changes

New Ship classes

M8 (Torpedo-) Bomber: [(Background Information) Bombers were designed to answer the demand for an effective, smaller ship that can be used to fight Capital ships. After some time, the Argon Shipyards at Omicron Lyrae built the first Prototype of this new class. The other races were soon after also sucessful in deloping similar ships.]

The M8 is a bigger and slower than the M3 Class. Ships of this class use Anti-Battleship Torpedos to combat Capital ships. The M8 has weak defensive weapons, armor and shielding and needs to use it´s cloaking device in the correct way to sneak around, because it is very vulnerable to enemy Fighter, Rockets and Corvets. Only the best pilots are able to use it successfully, this no ship for beginners! Its very similar to use like a WW2 submarine. And it will be hunted by special task forces...

M7 Frigate: [(Background Information)The concept for a Frigate Class first arose when the threat posed by fighters and the new Bomber Class became apparent. The governments of the 5 major races finally started to design this ship class after the sighting of a Xenon Frigate.]

M7 class ships, a hybrid between Corvettes and Capital Ships (in size, weapon strength, and shields), take the role of Patrol Cruisers but can also be encountered as Defensive Ship for large Convois. Even though the M7 has been designed to deal with Fighters or Bombers it can stand against an enemy M1 or even M2.

SF: Super-Freighters:
The Super-Freighters are very large transport ships designed for long range trade routes. Unable to dock on most stations, it relies on it's TS ships to buy large amount of goods in one sector and sell them at other sectors far away. Being able to use jump drives they provide a much faster way to distribute goods specific to one race across the universe.

MTS: Military Transport Ship

The MTS is a heavy armoured, "stand-alone" freightship with several turrets and good weapons and still able do land at any station or capital ship. Its primary role: Bringing supplies directly into the fighting zone without needing fighter support. They were born through a military program, but soon clever smugglers and independant traders using it for their kind of business, too. This is the ship traders waited for, ready for trade even in dangerous sectors!

MTP Military Person Transporter

After the sucessfull start for the new MTS class, clever Split engineers had the idea, to develop a replacement for the vulnerabel TP class in the same way. It gave the Split the opportunity to bring their brutal hunter commandos safe to the action. Other empires soon copy the class for their own fleets.

M0:

The most massive battleships ever seen in X. See or even control one of this monsters in battle! Or you take an M8 and try help to destroy them.

New Ships

X2-Pandora greatly increases the number of different ship types available. The original ships are now used as civilian ships or ships of the government, the new ones are used as Military ships.

Civil Protection Ships are are often met at border sectors. They patrol these sectors and try to defend them against Pirate Raids and small Xenon and Khaak Attacks.
Military Ships are usually found in the more important sectors, especially in the core sectors of a race. Their role is to defend these Core Sectors, and to defend the race's territory in case of larger attacks or invasions of an enemy race. They are also used offensively in case of a war.

New Stations

X2-Pandora will also add several new station types to the game. These include Nividium mines, stations for new military technology and many more.

Additional Stuff

All Ships use weaponary and shields specific to the race.

Sector Backgrounds have been reworked, some new backgrounds are added.

Planets now look better

Additional Asteroid types

new, random Sectors each time you start a new game (the map has been expanded also) - they never look the same

new factions

a brandnew main Plot

additional race start plots and other many independant plots

new Cockpits

HUD free cockpits - all information is given by the cockpit consoles! (integrated instruments like for example the gravidar)

the station bar, a nice place to be when you are on a station

pandora radio with new music, radio shows, intergalactic news, space traffic report, commercials...

much more interaction with NPC

changed way to acquire ships... like stealing them

new onboard computer and database

wars between factons in which you can do your part as a small part of the war machinery

Dynamic Universe

X2 has a universe with all ships being busy. But in the original game, you always used the same map, but you soon started to know every station. If you've started again, the universe was the same again.

Soon, new maps were created, but they also started to get well known.
X2-Pandora uses a different approach: the stations are created when you start a new game. And these stations are not fixed: they can get deserted, or even dismantled, while other stations are built. It's much harder to find a good place for your new factory, because another company may also find out there's a lack of this resource in the sector you have chosen and will build a factory to produce the same resource.

Configuration System

X2-Pandora has a configurations system that allows to alter different aspects of the game. For instance, it can be used to alter the number of ships, stations and asteroids that are built when you start a new game. This way, the game can be adapted to the performance of your computer. Additionally, you can adjust the behavior of the NPC's or the level of difficulty.

New Plots
Pandora will have two new kinds of plots:

Race-plots: Every racestart will have it's own story leading the player through the game with missions, jobs and more.

Main-Plot: This plot is race-independent, so you are always able to play it. Make sure not to miss it!

Independant minor plots: Several minor plots(that doesn´t mean they are shorter...) are waiting for you to let your blood freeze or to dive into the strange world of X2P´s sligthly mad NPC characters.

Gameplay Changes

Revised Fighting-System

In Pandora you won't be able to just rush into a Sector filled with enemies in your M2 and eradicate everything on your own. You'll need tactics. X2s "THINK" Part is now essential for surviving in this hostile Universe. Different Shipclasses are now far more restricted in their field of Operations. A M2 won't be able to hit small Fighters with its Anti-Capital Ship Weapons.

This Section has more Content, but we decided to keep silent on some of its biggest changes. (for now)

Sector Takeover

Sectors can be conquered and seized by any race in the game (even the player) This causes frequent attacks on Border Sectors. The player has several options in such a case: he can help the defender or attacker or he can try to exploit the situation in some other way.

Changed Jumpdrive Concept

The jumpdrive will be different from the standard X2 jumpdrive. We haven't yet decided how exactly it will work. We are working on some new ideas... If you have any ideas of your own, feel free to make suggestions.

That's the whole list for now...

X2 goes "full" audio

Forget everything you are used to, the revolution of sound already took place. Welcome to the wonderfull new X2P sound. The times of a silent universe are over:

-Plots are made audio, no need to read... just listen!
-NPC really talk to you, when your are interacting with them!
-station bar
-Pandora radio will entertain you through your long space travels with music, news and a lot of other funny stuff!
-on board computer completly new!
-new random race specific sound in stations, new race and rank specific communication with stations when your docking or for example asking for the permit to land or help

Last edited by 4of25; 23.09.2012 at 16:09
Reason: Plots and other stuff

Well, actually, I believe we will never be able to make a full feature list. Some changes are really subtle - for example, almost all original ship models are changed, but you don't see it, because we remodelled the ships to look like they had done before the change...

Few comments (I know this is late, by far):
1) Doesn't X3:Reunion have npc corporation competition? I read that they also will build new stations, but do stations in X3:R ever become dismantled? See here:http://www.gameshark.com/reviews/225...ion-Review.htm
2) Isn't sector takeover implemented in X3:Albion Prelude?
3) You mention border sectors where races confront each other, but do races ever expand into NEW sectors?
4) Does X3:TC add anything that duplicates Pandora?

Basically, I'm wondering how much Pandora adds to X2 that's unique and not available in later versions of the X-space sims.

Have these features been looked at since this was posted and were they revised? And what're the thoughts about jumpdrives?

I like the feature-list, but I'm wondering how much it adds over later x-games. Being old, x2 is really catching dust. It was old 3 years ago. CPU's and RAM need to be fully used with an x2 mod, otherwise, they're going to be underutilized. But I love how one of the features of Pandora is that you can decrease the numbers of certain things for slower computers. But how far can Pandora stress a system?

Pandora at it's present state needs a newer computer. I've a good enough system to run X3:TC really smooth at highest graphic settings, but it's easy to slow down X2Pandora. This is due to the graphic subsystem that's pretty bad compared to X3 graphic engine. X3 loads much more complex models pretty much faster than X2.
One of the features of X2Pandora that I really love is the script based building of the universe. It does not change the sector layout - these are always the same. But the stations, asteroids, ships as well as some nebula are all randomly generated when a new game is started. It uses build-in defaults for the generation, but Pandora comes also with a tool to change these settings. And by using high values for e.g. max number of asteroids, you can easily stress even a high-end system. We also use high-def textures - in fact, I'm thinking of an alternate download with more X2 compliant textures to make it run on older systems.

Quote:

Basically, I'm wondering how much Pandora adds to X2 that's unique and not available in later versions of the X-space sims.

I have to admit: even though I own all X games, I never really played any of these games beyond X2. Even though graphics are much better, and some very useful stuff was added, I never felt "home" at these games. They never was fascinated of these games as I was (and am) of X2.
Thus, I don't really know, if and how e.g. sector takeover works. Others may better comment on this. X2Pandora is more about things I missed in X2.

As far as I see, the whole configuration system is new to the X games series. And this also includes the Jump Drive. We couldn't agree upon the features of the jump drive: should all ships be able to jump or just big ships? What about a gateless jump drive (similar to Universe Trader)? How much energy does it need? And if ships can use a jumpdrive, especially if they use a gateless jumpdrive, no sector is safe anymore. What to do about this?
We long discussed these question, but everyone wanted a different system. So I decided to leave the decision to the player and I created a jumpdrive that's capable of all these features. By default, the jumpdrive works as it always has: a minimum ship class of M4 is required, it uses a certain amount of energy cells per sector (depending on the ship class), only gates can be the target of the jump and jump range is unlimited.
But all these aspects can be changed. Even M5's can use the jumpdrive - and all sectors can be protected by so called "Inhibitor stations", stations that emit the inhibitor field preventing ships to jump at these sectors if they don't know the frequency of the inhibitor field... It's a quite awesome view to see NPC ships use the jumpdrive whenever they think it's appropriate to use...

Not quite a unique feature, but anyway unique in its use: the M8 torpedo bomber is the only ship class in X2 universe that is capable to actually become invisible. As far as I know, X3R had a ship that can become invisible, but the player can't use it. The M8 can be used by the player - and if it's invisible, it's almost impossible to be detected. Only M5 ships can detect it, but they are too weak to fight the M8. But if they get any hint of the presence of a M8, they will call for reinforcement and this may eventually expose the ship - in which case the M8 is too weak to effectively defend itself. And the other races may use their M8 against you... so it's good to always have M5s around...

This is just a quick glimpse at some of it's features - I don't care if they're unique in X games - they are unique in X2 anyway.

Pandora at it's present state needs a newer computer. I've a good enough system to run X3:TC really smooth at highest graphic settings, but it's easy to slow down X2Pandora. This is due to the graphic subsystem that's pretty bad compared to X3 graphic engine. X3 loads much more complex models pretty much faster than X2.
One of the features of X2Pandora that I really love is the script based building of the universe. It does not change the sector layout - these are always the same. But the stations, asteroids, ships as well as some nebula are all randomly generated when a new game is started. It uses build-in defaults for the generation, but Pandora comes also with a tool to change these settings. And by using high values for e.g. max number of asteroids, you can easily stress even a high-end system. We also use high-def textures - in fact, I'm thinking of an alternate download with more X2 compliant textures to make it run on older systems.

I have to admit: even though I own all X games, I never really played any of these games beyond X2. Even though graphics are much better, and some very useful stuff was added, I never felt "home" at these games. They never was fascinated of these games as I was (and am) of X2.
Thus, I don't really know, if and how e.g. sector takeover works. Others may better comment on this. X2Pandora is more about things I missed in X2.

As far as I see, the whole configuration system is new to the X games series. And this also includes the Jump Drive. We couldn't agree upon the features of the jump drive: should all ships be able to jump or just big ships? What about a gateless jump drive (similar to Universe Trader)? How much energy does it need? And if ships can use a jumpdrive, especially if they use a gateless jumpdrive, no sector is safe anymore. What to do about this?
We long discussed these question, but everyone wanted a different system. So I decided to leave the decision to the player and I created a jumpdrive that's capable of all these features. By default, the jumpdrive works as it always has: a minimum ship class of M4 is required, it uses a certain amount of energy cells per sector (depending on the ship class), only gates can be the target of the jump and jump range is unlimited.
But all these aspects can be changed. Even M5's can use the jumpdrive - and all sectors can be protected by so called "Inhibitor stations", stations that emit the inhibitor field preventing ships to jump at these sectors if they don't know the frequency of the inhibitor field... It's a quite awesome view to see NPC ships use the jumpdrive whenever they think it's appropriate to use...

Not quite a unique feature, but anyway unique in its use: the M8 torpedo bomber is the only ship class in X2 universe that is capable to actually become invisible. As far as I know, X3R had a ship that can become invisible, but the player can't use it. The M8 can be used by the player - and if it's invisible, it's almost impossible to be detected. Only M5 ships can detect it, but they are too weak to fight the M8. But if they get any hint of the presence of a M8, they will call for reinforcement and this may eventually expose the ship - in which case the M8 is too weak to effectively defend itself. And the other races may use their M8 against you... so it's good to always have M5s around...

This is just a quick glimpse at some of it's features - I don't care if they're unique in X games - they are unique in X2 anyway.

I was reading a thread about X3:AB w/ XRM ( a mod I think ) and somebody mentioned that fleet responses were abusing the jumpdrive by jumping when they were low on shield (or whatever) and then jumping back when they were recovered. It's something to think about. If a ship can jump anywhere in the universe at anytime any number of times then what's stopping them from jumping to dozens of stations and setting off a bomb at each one just before jumping to the next one? Granted, there're no bombs in X2, but could jumping be abused?

I think jumping should be a part of the universe but it shouldn't be something you use to make money. My personal opinion is it should be something that's used sparingly and with limits. I only feel this way because I think jumping changes the game and the intertia of the change outpaces the inertia of the vanilla system that's already in-place. For example, vanilla X2 is almost completely void of jumping. It's true the Khaak jump, but there're no other non-players jumping. It wasn't until universal trader scripts were made and the jumpdrive was made for the player. But these things were basically player-only, not for non-players. This tells me that there's an intertial difference. There's not a harmony between player and non-player. There's a disconnect.

It should be eased into X2 slowly not all at once. Let the system that's already there adjust. Where there're gaps you can fix them. This allows for new strategies to form in order to replace abandoned old ones.

I guess part of this is that the player will always be "special". This is the way it's in almost every game. The player has tricks and things they can do that're not available to non-players - like having a jumpdrive or benefiting from it. I guess this is fine, but the problem happens when you start to take it for granted. If non-players start acquiring the ability to be "special" then the player won't be "special" anymore. What then? What happens when the player jumps to a hostile sector and attacks a ship and that ship jumps to escape? What happens if the player suddenly starts to become frustrated that the non-players are jumping?

One reason I never used the jumpdrive is because the non-players didn't use it. It broke the sense of immersion because I like to think of myself as existing in that universe. And I also felt that the game wasn't prepared for jumpdrive either. It was just tacked on for convenience.